Supreme Court Orders Rabbi Goren to Turn over Documents in Langer Case

The Supreme Court ruled today that Ashkenazic Chief Rabbi Shlomo Goren’s ruling in the Langer case has no effect on Abraham Borokovsky who is suing in a Petach Tikva religious court to have his status as a Jew confirmed. The Supreme Court also ordered Rabbi Goren to hand over all documents pertinent to the case to the Petach Tikva court and to pay IL 1000 toward the costs of Borokovsky’s litigation.

The status of Borokovsky, a convert to Judaism, was placed in doubt by Rabbi Goren’s ruling last year that Hanoch and Miriam Langer, the children of Borokovsky’s first wife and her second husband, were not illegitimate and could marry their fiances. Goren’s ruling, sanctioned by a nine-man religious court whose members have still not been identified, was based on evidence he said he had that Borokovsky’s conversion to Judaism was not valid. In that case he was never legally married to the Langer children’s mother and her subsequent marriage to Otto Langer was not adulterous.

The Supreme Court upheld Borokovsky’s claim that he was not called to give evidence by Goren’s court and was not aware of its deliberations. It ruled, therefore, that the Goren court’s decision could in no way affect the Petach Tikva court and implied that the latter, by the same token, could disregard Rabi Goren’s decision in the Langer case. Goren has claimed that the case was closed with his ruling. He has refused to turn over documents to the Petach Tikva court on grounds that it was biased against the Langer children inasmuch as it was the same court that had originally branded them bastards and forbade them to marry.

The Goren ruling in the Langer case created a furor in right-wing Orthodox circles in Israel and abroad which has not subsided. (In New York this week, the Committee for Jewish Survival announced that it was establishing an activist group to "arouse public opinion" against the alleged "coercion and intervention by the Israeli government in the rabbinate." Y. Wilenkin, general secretary of the committee, said the main target was Chief Rabbi Goren who, according to the group, "was elected by the direct intervention of the government in exchange for his permitting the Langers, who were declared illegitimate, to marry.").